The idea that being out in nature makes people feel good is now pretty well established. But there’s one environment where this general sense of well-being takes on a somewhat more extreme quality. Simply put, beaches do funny things to people.

It’s election season, and so big numbers are everywhere. Some of them may even be accurate, But as politicians promise £millions here and criticise £billion cuts there, distinctions between these numbers blur. I think of it as £M and £bn both amounting to what Daniel Kahneman might term the ‘prototypical image’ of a great heap of cash, with no further disaggregation required. But distinctions are important.

As part of the University of Sheffield's pioneering interdisciplinary programme 10bn (see this previous post for more details), I was due last Friday to talk at a session we had organised on 'Visions of Nature in a World of 10bn'. Unfortunately, Storm Doris had other ideas, and I was stranded in London. But had I made it back in time, here's what I would have said…